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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) delivered the following remarks in his maiden speech on the Senate floor:
“It’s the honor of my life to be here representing Indiana in the United States Senate. I want to start off by thanking Hoosiers for sending me here to serve them, my state, and my country. It’s an incredible honor.
“It’s humbling and thrilling, truly, speaking on the Floor of the United States Senate for the very first time.
“You see, I grew up in a trailer park in Columbia City, Indiana—a small town of less than 10,000 people. I still live there today with my wife Amanda and our three young daughters.
“Really, it is the best hometown in America. But when I was a kid, we lived on the very south end of town on a dead-end street with about a dozen trailers.
“I often drive by that boyhood home, and I point it out to my daughters and I say ‘that’s where I came from.’ Unfortunately for them, it’s on the way to school so they hear me say that a lot and they get annoyed every time I say it.
“But I have a lot of great memories growing up in that trailer park.
“I remember my dad teaching me how to ride a bicycle in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street.
“I remember his cream-colored Ford Bronco. The top would come off. He would wax it on the street. Drive it around town. He was so proud of it.
“I remember the bunk bed at the front of the trailer that I shared with my brother, Chad.
“I remember the swing set in the side yard.
“Mr. President, I remember deer hunting season. My dad would bring the buck home that he was proud of. We would can the meat and we would live off of it for the winter.
“My parents didn’t have much but they worked hard and they provided for my two younger brothers and I.
“My mom and dad were high school sweethearts—they didn’t go to college. They had me at a young age. My mom started working when she was 13 years old at a local nursing home called Miller’s Merry Manor. She only recently retired from working there for most of her life.
“My dad worked at a local Dana factory where they made axels for cars and other vehicles. My uncle, my grandpa, many relatives, many friends of our family also worked in that same factory. In fact, it was grandpa—my mom’s dad—who got my dad his job there when he started dating my mom.
“When I was growing up, that factory provided good pay and opportunities for so many families in my community. During all three shifts, 24/7, the parking lot would be overflowing as workers earned a wage that was good enough to support their families. That was our American Dream.
“Those were exactly the kinds of jobs that allowed my parents to put food on the table and raise their boys. To so many Americans, like my parents, the American Dream isn’t just some concept that think tank experts in Washington D.C. write about. It’s real. They lived it in their lives like my mom and dad did.
“Because to my mom and dad the American Dream is if you work hard then perhaps your kids will have a better shot than you did.
“Mr. President, I want to take a moment, like the Good Book says to do, and I want to honor my mom and my dad. It is because of them that I have lived the American Dream.
“Look at where I am today, the Floor of the United States Senate. From humble beginnings in a small town in Northeast Indiana, the first in my family to go to college. The great honor of wearing the uniform and serving mu country. I served my country in the United States House of Representatives and now here in this historic chamber, the United States Senate.
“My oldest daughter, Lillian, is in the gallery with us today. And just like my parents, I want my three daughters to be better off than I was. That’s the American Dream.
“This really is the greatest country in the history of the world. And that American Dream is worth fighting [for] and protecting.
“Sadly, the country has changed a lot from when I was growing up in that small town. There used to be plenty of those good-paying factory jobs like the one that my dad had, with pay that kept up with the cost of living, and companies that treated their workers right.
“But it’s no accident that a lot of those jobs have disappeared, and the working class is falling further and further behind.
“It’s clear: it’s the result of bad policy choices that put corporate and foreign interests ahead of those workers like my dad.
“Decades of ‘America Last’ policies have hollowed out our industries and crushed our workers. Wall Street shipped factories overseas and stripped our companies for quick profits. And for a state like Indiana—the top manufacturing state in the country—that is a huge blow.
“We’ve lost 6 million manufacturing jobs since 1980 while our population grew by over 117 million people.
“Like President Trump said last week, we’ve also lost more than 90,000 factories since NAFTA was signed.
“Adjusting for the value of the dollar, working-class wages for men haven’t gone up at all. They earned about $850 a week in 1980, and they still earn about $850 a week today.
“About 600,000 jobs went to Mexico over two decades since NAFTA.
“In the 1980s, it took about 40 weeks of work for a factory worker to earn enough to support their family. Today, it takes about 62 weeks, which means those working class families are growing debt and falling further and further behind.
“For too long, empty lots, boarded up buildings, and dead storefronts could be seen all over America because of the choices our nation’s elites made. It was a tremendous failure of leadership.
“They opened up our borders, they cut wages for workers, and as a result, cheap labor flooded into our country.
“Indiana is also the top steel producing state in the country, but the steel industry has shrunk by two-thirds.
“In 1980 the U.S. made one sixth of the world’s steel. Now, that’s dropped to one-twentieth.
“Foreign companies have used their low wages and subsidies to dump cheap steel and take over our market, while American steel companies have struggled to keep up.
“Today, America produces 1% of all of the cargo ships in the world. But in 1980, we made 50% of them.
“It costs more than double to build a ship in the US than it does in China or South Korea, and they heavily subsidize their shipbuilding industries
“You see, in Columbia City, my small hometown, the best paying jobs are at a local steel mill called Steel Dynamics. A lot of guys I went to high school with, a lot of friends of our family work there today and they do really well and provide for their families.
“But we’ve lost way too many of those kinds of jobs around the country to China and foreign countries who have taken advantage of us and our workers.
“It was great to see leaders from that steel mill, Steel Dynamics, in the Rose Garden last week where I had a front row seat to celebrate President Trump’s tariff announcements, which will massively help our steel industry in places like Columbia City, Indiana.
“For too long, our leaders have turned a blind eye when our enemies like China took those good-paying steel jobs away from us.
“One of the really memorable moments from the Rose Garden last week with President Trump for me was when he said that it’s hard to blame foreign countries when it was the lack of leadership on our own part that allowed those countries to take advantage of America.
“In fact, he kept pointing back to the Oval Office and saying that we’re in the position we are today because many of the men who sat in that office behind him did nothing while foreign countries took advantage of us and our workers.
“President Trump understands, like we all do, that we can’t pass the American Dream onto the next generation if we let China dominate us. In fact, he is the first President of my lifetime to call China a threat to the American way of life.
“That’s why I believe that letting China into the World Trade Organization was the worst economic mistake of my lifetime. For too long, they’ve:
“Stolen our technology,
“They’ve copied our products,
“And they’ve built up their industries with slave wages that American workers can’t and shouldn’t have to compete with.
“And no one has held them accountable until now.
“Too many of our leaders have been playing footsie with them instead of pushing back and standing up for our workers.
“In 2001, our trade deficit with China was $84 billion. By 2024, that deficit more than tripled to $295 billion.
“Nearly 25 years ago, China accounted for 8% of the world’s manufacturing output. But by 2020 that number had gone up to 35%.
“The Chinese Communist Party wants to make the U.S. irrelevant in every key industry—steel, aluminum, nuclear power, AI, semiconductors, telecom, planes, ships, cars, and many more.
“They’re making us weaker and dependent.
“And here’s the worst part about it: the CCP conned American investors into footing the bill. They rolled out the red carpet to corporate America, and Wall Street poured nearly $1 trillion into Chinese companies that destroyed American jobs.
“Some people believed, naively, that China would become freer, more open, and more like America. The complete opposite has happened. Now they’re our biggest enemy and it’s past time that we fight back. During my time in the House, I made it my mission, my biggest priority, to stand up to China.
“And only one President in my lifetime, once again, has understood that threat. In the United States Senate, I intend to help and stand with President Trump to stand up to China and put America first.
“When President Trump first came down that escalator over 10 years ago, my dad, a retired union factory worker, was for him from day one.
“I wasn’t so sure about it, but my dad knew that Donald Trump was going to fight for the working class. And boy was he right.
“President Trump tapped into the American people’s hopes in a way that few leaders before him ever had.
“That’s why I was so inspired, in just the first couple of weeks on the job as a United States Senator, to be in that rotunda for President Trump’s inauguration. When he talked about ushering in the Golden Age of America, it was so encouraging and inspiring to real people in real places like my hometown.
“I feel like I’m living through some of the best parts of our history, and I stand with President Trump and his commitment to put those working families first.
“He’s removing the ‘kick me’ sign from the backs of our workers and our producers.
“He’s doing what the voters elected him to do and he’s keeping his campaign promises.
“He’s putting our attention on the issues that matter most to working Americans—like being able to afford a home, a car, groceries, education, and health care. He’s standing up against global companies that are selling out to our enemies, and he’s bringing back a country that builds and makes things.
“Just last month, so important to Indiana, we heard that Honda is going to build their new Civic in Indiana. Not in Mexico. Last week, GM said that they would increase truck production just a few miles from my hometown in Fort Wayne.
“Our steel mills are roaring back to life. Our tech companies are hiring in America again.
“Eli Lilly, also based in Indiana, also plans to invest $27 billion in American manufacturing. So far, in just 10 weeks President Trump has announced $6 trillion of new investment in the United States of America.
“That type of investment is helping to bring back the American Dream for hardworking Americans.
“On Election Day this past November, I took what ended up being a long and nostalgic walk with my dog Marshall. He’s named after Thomas Riley Marshall, the 28th vice president of the United States who’s also from my small hometown. In fact, his vice-presidential statue is right outside the West door as you enter this chamber.
“On Election Day, we walked right past his home, which today is a museum in his honor to his history. When I was in elementary school, we would go on field trips to the museum, and the teachers would say ‘look what this guy did. Coming from a small town like this. If you work hard and dream big maybe you can do something like that too.’
“I went on this dog walk with Marsh and we walked past the museum, we walked past the courthouse in the town square in my hometown. We walked past the hot dog stand where I had my first job as a teenager. And then we ended up in that trailer park that I mentioned earlier where I grew up.
“I’ve driven past it many times but it was the first time that I’ve actually gone there alone and walked through and down this street since I was a kid.
“It was just a couple hours before the news would call my race and name me as the senator-elect for the great state of Indiana. So, this was a rather emotional experience for me. As memories from my childhood flooded back, and I realized how incredible of a life and opportunity that I’ve been given.
“But as we were walking down that street, I noticed a mom sitting on the steps of her trailer, smoking a cigarette, watching her two boys in the yard who would’ve been about the same age as my brother and I would’ve been when we lived in that trailer park too.
“As I watched them, I couldn’t help but wonder if those boys would be able to achieve what I did or if the deck was so stacked against them today that that kind of opportunity for them was way out of reach.
“Later that evening, as the results of the election rolled in, it became apparent to me that America decided to turn the page to a new chapter for this great country.
“And as someone who’s lived the American Dream, I’ve got great news for those boys and their mom: The Golden Age of America is here.
“It’s only been five months since Election Day when I took that walk and we’ve already seen a major shift for hardworking Americans.
“For too long, Washington has not cared about people like those boys and that mom. But I do and I know that all of you do and I know that President Trump does too.
“As leaders in this country, we have a duty to fight for those boys and those moms like her for their American Dream.
“To my Republican colleagues and my colleagues across the aisle—we must stand together more than ever before to fight for those working families. It’s going to take everyone in this chamber working together to do it.
“There’s so much in this fight that we can all agree on as Republicans and Democrats. And now is the time for the leadership of both parties to step up for American workers and families.
“We’re kicking off a new era of peace and prosperity like we have never seen before.
“Again, Indiana, thank you for this incredible opportunity. To my colleagues, it’s a privilege to serve with you. I am so excited about what lies ahead.
“Mr. President, I yield back.”